The World-Wide Web is a popular Internet application for the creation, storage and retrieval of rich multimedia content. Web addresses are used to direct communications on the Internet. A plurality of web browsers are available to access information on the Internet. When requesting a connection to a web address using HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP), the request includes Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) which includes universal resource locators and/or universal resource names, i.e., formatted strings that identify a network resource by name, location or another predetermined characteristic. URIs throughout the rest of the text include universal resource identifiers, universal resource locators and universal resource names.
Internet protocol headers are often lengthy. For example, a HTTP request may consist of over 200 characters. It is clear that, particularly with wireless networking, where capacity is a limited and scarce resource, it would be advantageous to compress at least part of the HTTP request.
Since URIs for many HTTP requests tend to contain large portions of redundant phraseology, there is a need for a method and device for negotiating compression of universal resource identifiers, thus providing more efficient allocation of resource capacity.